Tag Archives: discrimination

Following discussion with representative bodies, the LAA has amended the crime contract in respect of the 14 hour rule for duty solicitors. The amendments come into force on 23 July. With effect from that date the scope of what can be included in the 14 hour rule has been widened to include

Work under the contract – such as police station and Magistrates Court work

LGFS and AGFS work

Work under the armed forces legal aid scheme

Work under a court appointment for cross-examination of witnesses

Privately funded criminal defence work which would come under one of the above headings but for the client being ineligible for legal aid or otherwise electing to pay privately

Where you rely on private work you will need to have consent from your client for the LAA to check what work was done for the purposes of monitoring compliance with the rule. If consent is not given or not sought you cannot rely on this work. This is a positive change which goes some way to broaden the scope of the 14 hour rule. Many practitioners and representative bodies welcomed the principle of ensuring that duty work is only done by those genuinely engaged in the work for the firm benefitting from it. However the narrow drafting of the rule, and some inconsistencies of approach by contract managers, has caused some difficulty in practice. However, while it broadens the scope of what can be counted towards the 14 hours, the change does not affect how the 14 hours are measured. It continues to require an average of at least 14 hours work per week on qualifying work, measured on a rolling monthly basis. Practitioners have expressed concern about the impact of this rule, and its potential discriminatory effect, on those with different working patterns – such as carers, and parents who do not work during school holidays.

The LAA has announced that it is terminating the tender for CLA telephone contracts in the education and discrimination categories because “insufficient compliant tenders” were received, meaning there would not be enough successful bidders to run the service.

As there are currently only a very small number of contract holders, this suggests that there were no or very few bidders prepared or able to deliver the new contracts due to start later this year.

Education and discrimination are gateway exclusive categories – all cases must go through the telephone service and there are no separate face to face providers – all face to face services are carried out by the telephone contract providers, if they deem it necessary.

It is not clear what the future of education and discrimination services will be. The LAA says it will discuss next steps with affected organisations.

But if there are currently no providers willing to bid, or no providers able to demonstrate they can provide services of sufficient quality at an acceptable price, it is hard to see how that will change between now and October, when the new contracts were due to start.

The MoJ decided in 2012 to move education and discrimination services to the gateway with a small number of contracts. At the time many warned that there were significant risks with this approach. Numbers using the service have been lower than expected throughout. And there was concern that such a reduction in the provider base meant that there was no slack if contract holders pulled out or were unable to continue. It appears that fear has also been realised. Hopefully there is enough time for the MoJ and LAA to rethink before education and discrimination legal aid disappears altogether.